The Blank Canvas
Oh, the terror.
I’m in the HATED between-books position, where I’ve been through the hell of several drafts of a book I now love and am proud of. My agent is shopping it around and I’m checking my email every two point five seconds, waiting to hear if anyone else loves it as much as I do. But, of course, I’m a writer and I need to…write. Which basically means I need to start something new. This , my husband will confirm, is so not me at my best self. This is crazy Heather who is pretty miserable to be around.
Some people might think starting a new story is an exciting place to be. Oooh, look, they might say, what a great opportunity to be, you know, creative and have fun. Do your writer thing, right?
Uh, no. Not so much.
See, my happy place is when I’m either rocking out on the second draft or galloping towards the end of the first, knowing where I’m going and it’s just full steam ahead. I know my character inside out. I have a plot. Some of the writing is actually halfway decent. And I’m committed to it. I’m not thinking about giving up on it every time I sit down to write. This book and I, we’re in it for the long haul. We’ve said our vows and we’re sticking to them.
The blank canvas, the blank page, the white screen–whatever you want to call it–this is not a happy place. This is a place of doubt and uncertainty and why-the-hell-did-I-decide-to-be-a-writer. This is a place where everyone’s speaking a different language from you and you’re walking around all WTF and you don’t even know what color the sky is because you’re the creator and should the sky be bright, happy blue or overcast or maybe green because, who knows, this might be an alternate universe!
On top of all that, you’re thinking about the time a book takes and the emotional toll. Is this story that you’re thinking about writing worth it? Obviously if you go down this road too much, you’re stifling yourself and making it impossible to create. But it’s a worthy question and one that demands some consideration. Like this excerpt from a recent email I sent to my mentor:
Speaking of experimental writing…I’m feeling like I’m in a rut (not a rut rut, just like I’m not doing anything terribly new)…I feel like, no matter what the story I write is, the prose comes out similar. It’s very familiar…I guess I look at what M.T. Anderson does, especially with Feed or Octavian, and I think…YES. How do I do that?? I know you can’t really set out to write like someone else and I don’t want to write like him, but I’d like to present story and voice in a unique way. I guess I don’t want to sound so typically YA, like you could read three sentences of any given book I write and know right away that it’s YA.
There was a modern ballet I saw last week and it was PHENOMENAL (you can see clips of it on You Tube if you type in “Royal Ballet Chroma”). It blew my mind and as I was watching it, I thought that’s what I want to do with my writing. It was like nothing I’d ever seen and yet it felt a little familiar. What was exhilarating about it was that the newness of it was also emotionally resonant. I was surprised by how much it spoke to me as a ballet about this time on Earth (just before this piece, there was a stuffy old Balanchine set to Tchaikovsky, which I liked but wasn’t, you know, terribly of the moment). It was a dance that could only have been created in the new millennium, able to capture what it felt like to be alive now and what it meant to be human now. At least, that’s what I got out of it. Anyway, all that to say that I just want to make sure that my writing is always pushing boundaries, though not for the sake of pushing them. I want form to fit story, of course, but I’m afraid of becoming too comfortable. So, that’s where I’m at with my writing. Each thing I write, I want to be outside my comfort zone in terms of prose and writing about things I care about. I know that it always, always, always goes back to character and, trust me, I’m not losing sight of that. It’s just frustrating to feel like I know there’s something inside me, but I can’t figure out how to get it out on the page. I feel like all my ideas are these sort of been there, done that YA stuff and I want something epically strange. That’s it! Epically strange. But emotionally resonant with unforgettable characters.
After a little more rambling, I finally summed up what I want to do with my writing from here on out:
I love Laini Taylor. She’s sort of my fantasy author idol right now because her stories are so unique and beautifully written. They are wonderfully strange. So, maybe I should amend my goal to: I want to write something epically wonderfully strange, with lots of heart.
I thought I knew what I was going to write next. But now I wonder if I’m living up to my own desires. If I’m giving myself an opportunity to get out of the rut. Am I pushing myself? Am I living in a state of wonder? My mentor had told me this was a great place to be, that I should always be in this place because it means I’m not being lazy. Still, it’s pretty rough terrain and a tall order, at that.
Laini Taylor (oh goddess of fantasy writing) has some thoughts on this GAH / ARGH / UGH feeling. Of course her advice, like all good writers, is to write. Onward! she says.
And so I trudge on, in search of my story with nothing but my fingers to guide the way.
